Beyond the Pages
by Miss Selah
Summary: He wants to believe in happy endings. City of Angels Seth x Maggie


**Beyond the Pages**

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Over and over again he has a vision.

A young man, his age and coloring, has just plummeted to his death.

He has just leaped from a building, arms outstretched, and landed twenty seven floors below. A spray of blood frames what's left of his face, like a macabre halo. But he doesn't see it.

No one does.

It is almost as though the world has shot a close up frame, and all anyone can see is the smile that is pulled tightly a cross his face. He died smiling; either because of the wind on his face or from the feeling of flying, Seth can't be sure.

Seth thinks, maybe, it is because he died reaching for that ever elusive happily-ever-after. He liked to believe that he died reaching for something, someone. Someone who was reaching back for him.

He lived a fairly normal life, considering his fairly extraordinary beginnings. Job, car... dates, though they were few and far between. He worked in the library that he used to live in, so money was tight, but he didn't need much. His imagination was enough to get him by.

His imagination lingers, as it does so very often, on that happily ever after.

He isn't entirely sure, but he thinks that maybe he has already had his. Maggie, his beautiful Maggie. Sometimes he wondered why all the worlds greatest love stories are the ones in which the lovers are only given an infinitesimally small amount of time. Romeo and Juliet, of course, is more guilty of this than any other story he can think of off of the top of his head. Lovers brought together against all odds in the worst of circumstances.

Was it because of all the words never whispered in to that hidden spot behind a lovers ear? Because of the lost moments that would never be spent?

Or, more depressingly, is it because love has a rather depressing way of fizzling out, fading away.

He would like to think that, perhaps, people are given a certain amount of happiness in life, and maybe that fleeting romance that Romeo and Juliet experienced was them using up their allowance for this life. Then maybe, just maybe, that meant the he had been able to give his Maggie all the happiness that she could endure.

It didn't help him, though, in the middle of the night, when he rolled over in his sleep and his grasping fingers encountered what used to be an imprint of in the shape of his body. The blankets were cold and empty as he clutched them to his chest, trying to breath in the elusive remains of Maggie's scent.

Seth's mind drifted to the pages of a book half remembered and and dream that _isn't. _A man, his age and coloring, plumeted to his death, a smile on his face.

The worry stone in his pocket is rubbed raw as he poured over books, desperately trying to remember. The books were comforting, in their own way. They smelled a lot like her. She had always seemed to be permeated in the scent of leather and aged wood, as if she had spent a lifetime soaking in them. In a way, she had. Schooling had lasted her eight years, and then she had never managed to escape her old habits. It was in a library where he had first realized he loved her.

"Seth," a voice whispered from the back of his mind, "please..."

He was standing on the the edge of the precipice of forever, staring twenty seven floors to the ground. But he is not seeing the ground. Nor is he seeing the people milling about the ground below him, trying to obtain riches. Wealth. Enlightenment. No. He is past that.

He is elevated to a level above normality. He understands that he can't try to uncomplicate his life, like all the people around him are. He is simply trying to uncomplicate himself. He isn't just a person. In that moment, twenty seven floors above the ground, he is so much more.

He is a mountain. He is a breeze. He is in a deep, deep slumber, and he can hear Maggie's voice calling out to him.

He wants to believe. Against everything he knows about life, death, and everything in between, he wants to _believe. _That there is more. Can be more.

He wants to believe in Maggie.

He steps from the tower for the second time. For a moment, As he reaches forward, he doesn't fall. He is far too elevated to fall.

For a moment, Seth _flies. _

_He is going to keep reaching, keep believing in a happy ever after that they can share. _

_

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_A/N: Shit. Please ignore the fact that it appears that I lost my ability to make words beautiful. Fuck.  
_


End file.
